


The Shape of Things

by Jacklight



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bull's Chargers, Canon Trans Character, Domestic, Getting to Know Each Other, Krem takes over this story, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Romance, Shorts, Slow Burn, Thedas Headcanons, Threats of Violence, Worldbuilding, daemon AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-22 15:18:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17665019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacklight/pseuds/Jacklight
Summary: A collection of short scenes involving Dorian and Krem and how they figure each other out....because Krem keeps trying to take over all my Dragon Age stories. Also a Daemon AU, because reasons. For KissTheCrown, who asked for them when I mentioned them in passing. Enjoy!





	1. Introductions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KissTheCrown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissTheCrown/gifts).



Krem orders two tankards of Ferelden ale from Cabot and turns to stare down the Tevinter Altus in the corner of the tavern. He sits alone, a tankard at his elbow he hasn’t touched in near an hour, with a book spread open on the table. His daemon – some golden-haired monkey with a long, dark face – clings to his shoulders and occasionally points down at the book with some comment or other. The mage pair have been there, alone, for nearly three hours. The only break in the mage's monotony was a brief interaction with Sera before the elf disappeared up the stairs with one of the barmaids. Krem finally decides to do something about it.

He isn’t entirely sure why he’s the one to bridge the social gap.

The Chief is out with the Inquisitor on a mission to the Storm Coast, and the bulk of the Chargers are in the barracks assigned to them, entertaining themselves with dice and drink or private company. Krem is in the tavern with only a handful of his troop. He had Skinner and Dalish with him for a while, but their attentions had been caught by one of the Commander’s soldiers and Krem knows when he’s not wanted. The girls would have accepted him – have on countless occasions – but the soldier was obviously not interested in Krem.

No matter.

The girls will be more than he can handle anyways.

It’s a quiet evening, probably part of why the mage is still reading in the corner instead of fleeing the raucousness that usually pervades the tavern by this time of night. He's been there long enough that his bottle of wine is empty.

The Chargers have only known the man a couple months, mostly via pervasive Skyhold rumor. The most recent bout of which had a lot to do with the Vint’s bastard of a father and the reasons he left Tevinter - in at least five increasingly dismal variations. Krem can’t read between the lines of rumor and hearsay the way Chief can, but he knows Tevinter and that’s all he needs to know. The Chargers had been in Haven for some time before the Vint showed up as the harbinger of doom. They left the man alone at first. Everyone seemed to leave the man alone, though Krem occasionally spots the mage with the Inquisitor’s retinue, or playing chess in the garden with the Commander, or lobbing meet buns and insults at Sera while she perches on the tavern roof in the mornings.

Still, the man sits in the tavern most nights of the week to drink alone.

Cabot delivers his tankards and Krem sidles up to the Vint's table and drops the ale right in front of him. The mage doesn’t start, but the fingers of one hand clench in response as he looks up at Krem. The monkey on his shoulder does the same, half hidden behind the man’s head as if its shy. Chief could read all sorts of things about a pair by the daemon’s behavior alone, but Krem doesn’t read people the same way and the mage’s eyes are more open than he expected. The wariness and shields that the Vint raises with Krem’s advance are obvious.

“Ale,” Krem says and sits across from him with his own tankard. “Tastes like piss!”

The mage’s brows rise and he eyes Krem with a guarded look. He then glances at the ale warily.

“It’s not poisoned,” Krem tells him, “though it may taste like it.” He takes a long pull of his own and wonders if the man is going to speak or accept the drink.

“You give such flattering validations towards the drink you’re offering.” The man’s voice is low and smooth as satin. His mustache follows the curve and motions of his lips in a wholly distracting manner. Still, the man spins the tankard to grip its handle and raise it to his mouth. He grimaces at the drink and Krem grins. “Told ya!”

“Lovely,” the mage says, dragging his tongue against his top teeth as if trying to scrape the taste from it. Krem catches sight of a gold bar through the man’s tongue as it clacks against his teeth. It matches the one through the middle of his nostrils. “Trust Fereldens to serve the equivalent of horse piss as palatable drink.”

“It grows on you.”

“Like a fungus?” the man asks, eyes bright with mirth.

“Exactly so!”

The Vint hums, takes another drink and doesn’t grimace again. “Dorian of House Pavus,” he introduces himself, “most recently of Minrathous and," he waves airly at the rafters, "hereabouts.”

“Krem,” he says, offering his hand over the table. Pavus takes it with more strength than Krem expected of a mage. “Cremisius Aclassi, Lieutenant of The Bull’s Chargers.”

“Yes,” Pavus says, nearly purrs, “I’m aware. Your eminent leader has spoken of you.”

“Aw, Chief talks about me?”

“Perhaps more often than you know,” Pavus says. He doesn’t make to look for Krem’s daemon, nor does he introduce his own. Krem didn’t expect him to, but it’s still odd after so many years in the south where people and their daemons are so readily interactive.

Krem waves a hand towards the Chargers table where a menagerie of half a dozen daemons is buried underneath. Dalish is in the soldier’s lap now, he notes with some amusement, with Skinner draped over them both, her nose right up in his face. Whatever shape the soldier's daemon takes is a mystery hidden under the menagerie. Krem’s own Tisiphone is in the pile, laughing loud at something or other. “Tissy’s in that mess,” he says, ignoring Pavus’s look of surprise, “she’s the hyena. She may wander over to say hello later.”

“Planning on staying a while, are you?”

“Sure. Unless I can convince you to join us for cards?”

Pavus’s smile is small but real enough to reach his eyes. “Perhaps.”

“You haven’t been in the south very long, then, have you?”

“Pardon me?”

Krem points openly at the man’s daemon. The action gets both of their attentions and he finds it a little unnerving to be the focus of two steel-grey gazes. “Took me years to shake the whole ‘don’t talk to daemons’ thing Tevinter does. The south ain’t like that.”

Pavus studies him for a long minute before speaking. “Tevinter’s reticence about daemon socialization is a pervasive habit we have yet to shed, even after years.”

Krem blinks at that, surprised the mage has been out of Tevinter for so long. He’s equally surprised the man volunteered the information.

“His name is Calo.”

Krem grins almost as wide as Tisiphone and meets the monkey's eyes straight on. “Hello!”

Calo edges out from behind Pavus’s head, one hand still gripping the man’s hair, tail raised behind him for balance. He’s a very pretty shape: some northern baboon breed Krem can’t name but recognizes, large and slim with golden hair and a pale mane around his dark face. His maw is long, much like a dog’s rather than a monkey’s, and the skin of his hands are the same dark grey shade as his face. His eyes are the same silver as his human’s, a commonly shared feature between pairs. His gender is unusual, but Krem can hardly comment.

“Well met, Cremisius,” Calo says. His voice is almost the same timber as his human’s, but the baboon’s accent is a lot thicker, as if he hasn’t spoken enough Trade to shed the Tevene elements yet. It’s a very pleasant lilt of sound, Eastern Imperium, Krem thinks. He didn't hear the same traces of dialect accent in Pavus.

“Eastern?" Krem asks.

"I was born in Qarinus, yes." Pavus eyes his daemon with a mild sort of dismay.

Calo shrugs and crawls down his arm to sit on the table. The baboon's limbs are lithe. He’s bigger than he looks when curled up on his human's shoulder. His tail is long and tufted and it remains curled around Pavus's arm.

"I grew up in Marnus Pell," Krem offers.

Pavus eyes him with a sort of mild curiosity, tangles the fingers of one hand into a flexible knot. Krem could never get his fingers to do that. The mage's rings glint as they catch the light - at least five stacked on three fingers. He either doesn't notice or ignores his daemon dipping its paws into his tankard of ale. "My father is the Lord of Asariel," Pavus says as if hesitant to either reveal the title or talk about his father. Considering the rumors, Krem would bet on the latter, but he doesn't know the mage well enough to be sure. "I have spent a lot of time in both Asariel and Marnus Pell." He offers a small, conspiratorial smirk. "I would often evade the circle tutors in Asariel to escape to the dock taverns in Marnus Pell. It was only half a day’s ride down the coast and it took my father's men over a year to figure out the destination of my excursions."

"Rebel," Krem says, "how old were you?"

"Oh, I was at the Circle of Asariel from thirteen to fourteen or so."

"You ran off to the dock taverns of Marnus Pell at thirteen?"

Pavus's grin is wide and edges straight into a leer. Krem stares at him, well aware of not only the reputation but the actuality of Marnus Pell's seedy dockside taverns. He'd spent enough hours picking fights and winning dice games to know exactly how dangerous they could be to young pretty boys. None of them were any place for a boy still too young to even be close to manhood.

"Maker," Krem breathes, impressed despite himself. "How are you still alive?"

Pavus's laugh is a rich rolling sound that comes from the depths of his gut and throws his shoulders back. Krem stares at the display, entranced. He knew the mage was attractive. It’s obvious from any distance. He hadn’t expected quite how much, though. Nor the impact of the man’s voice had on the heat in Krem’s belly.


	2. Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Kaffas! Cole!” Dorian splutters, “what have I told you about that!”
> 
> “Oh. Not to ask about the sex in public. Sorry, Dorian.”
> 
> Dorian sputters and spits out a stream of muttered Tevene, face flushed even in the dim light.
> 
> “There’s no problem with talking about sex,” Bull leers his way into the conversation.
> 
> “Discussing the intimate acts of one’s companions is hardly proper dinner conversation,” Dorian retorts.

The evening is a rare dry one on the Storm Coast. The Inquisition camp is well established, well-guarded, and features a trio of campfires spread through the central spaces. The small team of Chargers sit at one with a couple of the Inquisitor’s companions. Dinner is long over and the conversations are marinating in drink and smoke. Somewhere up the slopes to the west, a dead dragon lies.

Krem accepts another drink from Skinner and throws his cards down on the makeshift table, disgusted with their suits. Grim picks up the cards to shuffle for another round, but no one is in a hurry to deal. Krem sips at the ale and watches the fire, let’s the sounds of voices and the waves lull his mind. At his side, the Chief has a sleepy scout on his lap, his big hand dwarfing her torso where he holds her to him. Bull’s massive daemon, Sweetheart, looks to be asleep behind them with the scout’s little raccoon daemon curled atop her giant head like a skinned hat.

Krem can’t remember the scout pair’s name.

It probably doesn’t matter.

Tisiphone rolls and presses her bulk into his shins, catching most of the heat off the fire before it gets to Krem. Across the fire, the Tevinter mage is sharing a pipe with the Inquisitor. Her face is in shadow, mostly due to the dark tattoos splashed across her eyes and brow. Occasionally, Krem catches a whiff of familiar, sweet tobacco smoke through the smell of the campfire.

Dorian entertains Cadash with magical shapes blown out of his mouth in smoke, each more elaborate than the last. His fingers cradle the pipe’s bowl, stacked rings glinting in the firelight, as he breathes the smoke out between his lips.

Their daemons sit next to each other, touching.

Krem’s never seen Dorian’s Calo touch another daemon before, even in the months they’ve all been in Skyhold together. The touch isn’t much, but the baboon reaches out to Cadash’s porcupine as they talk, fingering spines or flicking at his ears.

“Dorian,” Cole’s voice floats over the fire and Krem sees the mage tense from that one word alone. Cole is suddenly perched on the log next to Dorian, knees pulled up clear to his chin like a squirrel. Cole is entirely too close to the other man for propriety, but Dorian doesn’t seem bothered by the proximity. He turns his head to the spirit-human-boy, pipe lowering between his knees, his face a complex mix of trepidation and openness.

Then Krem freezes as the rest of Cole’s question tumbles out across the campfire.

“What is a mendogenus?”

“Ah,” Dorian starts and does not look across the fire to where Krem is sitting next to the small team of Chargers.

Krem can feel Bull shift next to him and Tisiphone tense over his legs. Dorian doesn’t look tense at all.

“What are you tugging at now, Cole?”

Cole breathes out words like a prayer, “Rilienus, skin tan like fine whiskey, cheekbones shaded, lips curl when he smiles. Sweet apples and Valerian tobacco and dried figs on the tongue.”

“Ah. That one.”

“I don’t understand. He’s a man, but he isn’t a man, but you call him a man.”

“Mendogenus is a Tevene term,” Dorian starts. His attention is on Cole, but he must know that everyone else around the fire is listening, Krem included. Most of the others are pretending to give them privacy; Cole’s conversations are rarely anything but invasive, but Krem openly watches and listens. Krem glances at Bull, finds that the Chief is watching Krem, not Dorian. Krem makes a face and turns away before Bull can prod at him.

“It’s not exactly a polite term,” Dorian says.

Krem’s eyes drift back to him as if lured like a moth. The mage taps the mouthpiece of the pipe against his bottom lip as he talks. “It means ‘faulty gendered,’ or thereabouts. Tevinter uses it for those who are born one gender but feel they should be another.”

“Why do they think they’re faulty?”

“Well, we can’t all choose our shapes like you can, Cole,” Dorian says, “and sometimes, some of us are born in the wrong shape. These people feel disconnected from the gender of their bodies, so they live and call themselves by what they feel is right, even if their bodies don’t match. I’m not sure I can explain it further. Does that help?”

“The curves are all wrong, growing where they shouldn’t be, weight swinging in the wrong place,” Cole says, tilting his head between his shoulders. Krem thinks he sees a reflection of the fire under the spirit’s hat as he stares at Krem. “Too soft, too plush, not like it’s supposed to be. Does he see me for me?”

Kaffas, Krem thinks. That’s not from Dorian’s head at all.

“Ah,” Dorian says, still watching Cole and not any of the others, as if what Cole is saying is still out of his own mind. “That sounds about right.”

Cole turns back to Dorian. “You made him feel like a man when he was in you.”

Krem chokes at the same time Dorian does. A ripple of reaction passes through those at the fire as the meaning behind Cole’s words registers with obvious intimacy. The imagery that follows the statement slams through Krem’s mind and sticks there like a burr. The glow of Dorian’s skin in the fire, the taste of whiskey and figs, the imaginary image of the mage spread out on sheets as he moans – all weighs down in Krem’s head and he tries to breathe it out without success. Instead it just sinks heat into his belly.

“Kaffas! Cole!” Dorian splutters, “what have I told you about that!”

“Oh. Not to ask about the sex in public. Sorry, Dorian.”

Dorian sputters and spits out a stream of muttered Tevene, face flushed even in the dim light.

“There’s no problem with talking about sex,” Bull leers his way into the conversation.

“Discussing the intimate acts of one’s companions is hardly proper dinner conversation,” Dorian retorts.

“Hey, dinner’s over and it’s good drinking conversation!” Bull’s words break most of the awkwardness of the group and shunts it into amusement. Dorian’s daemon noticeably settles back against his human’s legs, as if he’d been prepared to flee – or fight. Maker, how often has the mage pair had to defend themselves because of their sexual preferences?

“Heathens. Plebeians, the lot of you. I’m surrounded by dirty, filthy mercenaries. Kaffas.”

“Absolutely filthy,” Bull agrees, still leering at the mage.

Dorian sniffs, the action tilting his head up into a proud display that opens his neck and allows him to look down his long nose at The Bull. The action is all pride, as if he’s sure of his abilities to the point that he doesn’t need to protect the vulnerable soft parts of his belly or neck. “Uncivilized brute.”

“Hey, I know Tevinters talk about sex.”

“Yes. In privacy,” Dorian sneers, “or in a brothel, which coincidentally, is also out of the public eye.”

“Hah! Maybe that’s why you’re all so stiff all the time.”

“Ah, but talking about sex often will make one stiff,” Dorian says with a smirk.

Bull laughs loud enough that he wakes the scout. His chest and belly shake with it. Krem wonders if it feels rather like an earthquake, laying atop him like that. She frowns as she wakes, grumbling and smacking at Bull’s rumbling chest. As the Chief soothes her sleepy ire, Krem eyes the mage across the fire. He doesn’t seem at all embarrassed by the talk of sex, or the exposure of his sexual preferences. Maybe he was merely surprised at Cole’s revelation, or soothed by Bull’s easy acceptance of his proclivities. Or maybe he relaxes because no one attacked him, physically or verbally.

The Inquisitor slips the pipe out of his fingers, mumbling something low enough that Krem can’t hear it. It makes Dorian give her a soft, easy smile that catches the breath in Krem’s lungs.

Cole reaches out to pinch at one of the straps crossing Dorian’s chest, getting his attention. Dorian drops his puffed-up display as he turns to the spirit.

“He would have said yes,” Cole says, then frowns as he continues, “but your father would have said no.”

“Oh.” Dorian sounds inordinately surprised. Krem can’t tell if the rest of his emotion is pleasure or regret. Maybe both. Dorian seems bittersweet. “Good. That’s, well, thank you, Cole.”


	3. Watching Insults

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time Dorian Pavus works with The Chargers Krem figures it’s a tossup whether the Altus or Skinner will end up in a body bag and he’s entirely unsure who would do the killing or how.

The first time Dorian Pavus works with The Chargers Krem figures it’s a tossup whether the Altus or Skinner will end up in a body bag and he’s entirely unsure who would do the killing or how.

He’d bet good money that Skinner would use a dagger between Dorian’s ribs from any direction she feels like – though not a single Charger is stupid enough to take that bet – but Dorian’s methods of slaughter are harder to pin down.

The man is a walking bag of good looking contradictions.

When the Inquisitor dumped the Tevinter mage on the mercenary company with a chipper, “get along, now!” the mage had glowered and hissed at her while simultaneously braiding gold beads into her hair with gentle, long-boned hands. Cadash stood still for it, chattering around a smoking pipe that she shared with the mage. Krem’s never seen an Altus smoke a dwarven tobacco pipe before, yet Dorian handled it with easy familiarity, puffing out magical shapes and entrancing the Chief with imitations of a smoking dragon.

Krem has seen the man take out bears with fireballs larger than his head, cut down bandits with the bladed end of his staff, and use Horror to chase off a lone wolf, all in the same day. Krem’s also about ninety percent sure the mage keeps a dagger in his left boot.

So, it’s hard to say how he would slaughter Skinner.

It took nearly a week for their tension and thinly veiled insults to culminate in … this.

With the soggy backdrop of the Storm Coast and the camp fire acting as front stage lights, the bulk of the Chargers team watches from a safe distance as Dorian and Skinner argue. The fire is large, and it should give them all enough time to run for cover when the fireworks start, though Krem figures they’re all still too close if he can see Dorian’s rings glinting. They keep catching the firelight and reflecting bright flashes of red and gold as Dorian’s hands wave about. The rising danger doesn’t stop the Chargers from laying bets or debating how the two will kill each other.

“He might use Horror like he did to that bandit last week,” Stitches says. “It was strong enough to rupture something in the man’s brain. Bled out of his ears while he screamed.”

Krem sucks in a breath, remembering that incident a little too well. He’d not known, before, that Horror could be used to kill. It was like the bandit had died from an overdose of nightmares.

Tissy leans heavily against his thigh and Krem drops a hand into the ruff of fur at her neck. She’s watching the show on the other side of the fire with a grin, tongue lolling out.

“Fireball to her face,” Rocky says, his eyes bouncing between the two in question.

“Too easy,” Dalish argues from Krem’s other shoulder, “fire only if she goes at him from the front and he’s got his staff at hand.”

“Nah,” Bull rumbles from over Krem’s head, “fire’s too messy. He’d raise one of the dead to kill her for him, drag her into the sea. Maybe one of the bears. Seen him do that once against a Venatori outpost in the Frostbacks a couple weeks back. Bastards didn’t know the thing was already dead when they started hacking chunks off it. Didn’t even slow it down. You remember that, Sweetheart?” He slaps the back of his hand against his daemon’s flank. The gorilla swings her big head around to stare at him.

“Gross, Chief,” Krem says. “That’s gross.”

Bull grunts assent.

They’re all silent for a minute as the spitting argument on the other side of the fire escalates in volume. Skinner is speaking half in slave sign, her hands a jerky blur that is more telling of their words than her clipped voice is. She’s only speaking every third word or so, so angry that she’s nearly speechless. Her voice, when she does speak, is still loud so Krem figures Dorian isn’t about to get stabbed quite yet. Skinner tends to go silent when she gets deadly. Her daemon is hissing wordless sounds from her neck, making more noise than he usually does in mixed company. Surprise of all surprises, Dorian responds in kind, his hands whipping around him as he hisses out a complex stream of words that coalesces into an insult to her hair (of all things). Every word he speaks is signed precisely with his fingers. This only makes Skinner more furious.

“Where’d he learn sign, you think?” Krem asks. “Alti don’t learn that shit. Slaves guard it jealously from them.”

“He slummed it in Minrathous’s elven tenement houses for nearly a year about when he was fifteen.”

Krem blinks and tips his head back to look up at The Bull. Bull nods, eyes on the two arguing as if he could stop them before they killed each other. Bull’s fast for someone so large but Krem doubts the Chief could do a blighted thing to stop the two if they decide to go at it with more than words.

“The fuck?”

Bull shrugs. “By fifteen he’s enrolled in one of the Imperium’s strictest circles for troubled little magelets, shut in tight like a nightingale in a gold cage. He slips out after three months and disappears into the slum brothels of Minrathous for a year. He pops up later in the Alexius house in Vyrantium like a fuckin daisy.”

Krem blinks. “You pulled Par Vollen’s dossier on him, didn’t you, Chief?”

That just gets him a clipped, “yup.”

“Should we be worried that Par Vollen has a dossier on our Vint?”

“Nope,” in the same clipped tone. Bull shrugs his wide shoulders. “He’s an Altus. His father is a Magister of a noble line. It’s expected that the entire family has been spied on.”

Krem looks back across the fire in time to note that Skinner is down to every fourth word spoken. Her hands are twisting into a rictus of shapes, far too fast for Krem to track any of the words. Dorian seems to be able to read them just fine, responding in perfectly formed full sentences, each and every one of them filtered with enough four-syllable words that Krem can gauge the mage’s temper on them. When angry, Skinner goes silent and Dorian gets wordy.

Dorian’s daemon ignores it all, perched on the edge of the campfire closer to the Chargers than to the argument, not even watching as his human trades insults with a southern city elf. Instead, Calo is flipping through a leather-back journal, mouthing words as if reading and completely unconcerned.

“I think he’d ice her,” Stitches says, picking up their debate again.

“Is that frost on his staff blade there?”

“Yup,” Dalish says. “Been there since she insinuated his hair is a result of a potion.”

Krem turns his head to stare at Dalish and she shrugs. He’s hardly been able to track their argument. He didn’t see the start of it, heard it escalate through tearing insults to each other’s clothing before the hand signs started and he lost the track of it. Full half of Dorian’s big words Krem hasn’t even heard before, and Skinner is hardly speaking, so Krem stopped trying.

“They’re arguing about their hair?” he asks.

“Nah,” Dalish says, “they’re just trading insults, now. About their features, or their clothes, or whatever. All stupid shit. Some of them are good though. I haven’t seen anyone keep up with Skinner like that before. If she doesn’t gut him she might actually decide she likes him.”

“Still think he’d use fire,” Rocky says.

“Skinner’d get to him before he could pull his staff off his back,” Bull says. “He’s not that fast with unslinging it.”

Krem winces at a particularly scathing comment from Dorian about Skinner’s choice in boot style. Honestly, the man chose the strangest things to insult people with. Dorian’s features are all haughty disdain, but there is a glint in his eyes that could be malice or amusement. It’s hard to tell around the spitting insults.

“He doesn’t need his staff.”

“Eh?”

“He’s an Altus,” Krem says, as if that could explain everything.

It should, really.

Sometimes he despairs about the ignorance of southerners relating to Tevinter mages. They really have no idea what an Altus can do.

“He could fling enough magic about without that stick to affect the entire camp.”

Bull is rather still behind him, and most of the rest of them have turned to stare at Krem instead of the show being put on across the fire.

“Whatya mean he doesn’t need it?” Rocky asks.

Krem shrugs one shoulder, jostling his crossed arms. Honestly. Southerners. Krem isn’t even a mage, doesn’t have a single mage in his entire family, but even he knows how dangerous a blighted Altus is. “He’s not some southern circle mage shut up in a tower and dependent on a stick. He’s Altus. See his rings? The gold in his nose? I think he’s got a bar through his tongue, too.”

“And nipple rings,” Bull says cheerfully.

Krem turns a flat look to the qunari which goes ignored. Krem does not want to know how Bull knows that. “He can use each and every one of them as a focus,” Krem says. “He’s likely got spells primed on the rings already. I’ve seen an Altus wiggle their fingers and set things on fire. Any good material that’s used to make a stave can be used as a focus if it’s refined the right way.”

“So, he could probably shoot fire out of his arse, is what you’re saying,” Rocky says.

“Pretty much.”

They’re all silent for a few minutes, watching across the fire as the two trade insults with words and hands. They haven’t gotten any closer to each other, which is probably a good thing, but more likely it doesn’t matter. Skinner’s fast enough to gut Dorian even from five paces away, and Dorian is a ranged attacker. He could toss fireballs at her from a considerable distance. As it is, the two are just far enough away that they can comfortably hiss and yell at each other without either of them worrying that the other won’t hear their taunts.

“If he can shoot fire out of his arse, do you think he pierced that, too?” Dalish asks into the silence.

Krem – along with all the rest of them – turn to stare at her.

She shrugs, nonplussed. “What?”

“I’d like to see that,” Bull says with an interested rumble.

“Keep it in your pants, Chief.”


End file.
